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1. The United States calls the kettle black

   Canadians owe Donald Trump a debt of gratitude for repeatedly referring to our average 270 per cent tariffs on dairy products coming into—or trying to come into—this country. For many Canadians, that’s probably the first they’ve heard of ...

2. Withstand the trade war by trading more

   Canada and the United States are in a trade war. The ongoing drama of NAFTA negotiations, and the possibility that the current trade arrangements, may not continue raises an important question. What is the Trudeau government’s Plan B? ...

3. Through the WTO, Canada could reaffirm its commitment to multilateral institutions

   The Trump administration’s imposition of tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum exports to the United States, and the G7 debacle, which ended in unprecedented acrimony between U.S. and Canadian officials, underscore two compelling issues ...

4. Canada, Trump and tariffs—a counterproductive and self-defeating quarrel

   President Trump’s recent actions have drawn widespread media attention to tariffs. Economic science provides an effective means of discerning the implications amid the hyperbole and rhetoric. Earlier this year, the Trump administration ...

5. The end of Trump-whispering

   I wrote in January about how economists, apart from warning about the consequences, don’t have an awful lot to say about how best to fight a trade war. Adam Smith himself wrote that such wars were a situation in which policy be left to ...

6. Steel, aluminum, tablecloths and NAFTA

   What do steel and tablecloths have in common? They are now products that are part of a dollar-for-dollar tariff war between the United States and Canada. They are also canaries in the NAFTA coal mine, signalling that the oxygen has ...

7. Shrinking U.S. trade deficit likely bad news for U.S. trading partners

   Ordinarily, official announcements of the monthly U.S. trade deficit get minimal attention from the media. Not so for the recent announcement by the U.S. Commerce Department of the March 2018 U.S. trade deficit. Numerous media reports ...

8. Canada has completely lost its business tax advantage over the U.S.

   Many factors affect Canada’s ability to attract and retain investment, entrepreneurship, and skilled workers. Some of them—such as global swings in commodity prices—are not within the government’s direct control. But government policies ...

9. TPP redux—The Art of the Bad Deal

   You encourage 11 of your allies to get together with you in a trade and investment deal. You impose structure and content on it. Then at the last minute you decide you yourself aren’t going to join. After they go ahead and finalize the ...

10. Under threat—the lucrative export of U.S. dollar notes and U.S. Treasury securities

    President Donald Trump’s policies to balance trade and increase employment will likely fail because of an iron law of international economics: If a country spends more on goods and services than it produces, the difference must be ...